


strip me bare (tell me you love me)

by thechaoscryptid



Series: Catharsis [35]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bathing/Washing, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Massage, Mutual Pining, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Time Skip, Scars, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Vulnerability, admission of feelings, but make it half-resolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25861420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thechaoscryptid/pseuds/thechaoscryptid
Summary: Felix always shows up when the world's on the edge of too much.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: Catharsis [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1114704
Comments: 18
Kudos: 167





	strip me bare (tell me you love me)

**Author's Note:**

> _Ben Wyatt voice_ It's about the feelings stirred up late night post-nightmares
> 
> [Soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4QaFY7gRR8)

Felix has always had a knack for showing up at the best and worst of times. Through thick and thin, great days and nights where Sylvain wants nothing more than to fall through the floor and into the very earth below, he’s been there, scowl twisting his lips and irritation simmering below his skin. It’s not as though the presence is unwelcome—generally the opposite. He dulls the knife of...well,  _ everything.  _

The past.

The war.

The way it’s harder to sleep with every passing night.

Sylvain sinks deeper, legs splayed and hands over his face as he lets out a low sigh. The sound of water dripping from his hair echoes in the stillness, loud and yet somehow impossibly soft, the gentle notes of a storm’s end ringing from the walls. He’s glad for the quiet tonight. Everyone else is asleep, he hopes, because anyone else finding him like this sounds like his own personal hell.

It’s beginning to get cold, but that’s no matter. He’s handled worse, during worse times—frozen mud caking his boots and armor, warm blood streaming in rivulets as the water does tonight. The feeling anchors him here, anchors him home.

Anchors him enough that the sound of someone slipping into the room behind him doesn’t immediately make him reach for a weapon.

“It’s late,” Felix says from the door.

Sylvain opens his eyes and gives a half-hearted smile to his reflection in the water, running a hand through to disturb it before he looks over his shoulder. “So why are you here?”

There’s no judgement in the words, no anger or frustration, but Felix looks away regardless. “You weren’t in your room.”

“Looking for company?”

Felix is silent.

“I don’t bite unless you want me to, Fe, come on.” Sylvain drags his fingers across the surface, turns his face away because it seems like Felix doesn’t want to be seen tonight. He’s like that, sometimes (a lot of times), aloof and only willing to be paid attention to on  _ his  _ terms, and Sylvain’s grateful for his presence just the same. 

Silent still, Felix pads over and sinks into the water, immediately starting in on how cold it is. “I know you’re more used to it, but spare a thought for the rest of us,” he grumbles, slowly raising the temperature. “We don’t need you sick because you sat in the cold too long, idiot.”

“Touching,” Sylvain says. He lets his eyes slide shut again, thoughts slipping away as he’s blanketed with the exasperated huff Felix gives when he tips his head back. “Hm?”

“You should be asleep,” Felix says after a second. His tone’s just to the left of normal, and Sylvain cracks an eye to see him with his bottom lip tucked between his teeth. “We both should be.”

“And yet here I am, and you’re wandering the halls looking for me,” Sylvain says. “I could’ve been with a gi—”

“Don’t,” Felix bites out, and the glance he sends over is so scathing Sylvain wonders if he’s really fucked it up this time.

“Don’t,” Felix says again, softer as he leans back to get his hair wet. “I haven’t gotten through all of this just to hear you talk about your fucking girls, Sylvain. Be quiet if that’s what you’re thinking about.”

“Fine,” Sylvain says, even though it’s not, and he hasn’t thought about anyone but Felix that way for well over a year now. The echoing noises are much louder now, deafening as Felix smooths the water from his hair, but it’s better than clashing metal and dying screams, so Sylvain accepts it.

It’s easy, being with Felix. 

Hard, too, but tonight he’s less acerbic than usual. He’s quiet as he washes himself, and then as he’s done, and still as he crosses his arms and turns his eyes to the ceiling. Sylvain sits. Waits. Wonders.  _ Fuck,  _ he wonders what exactly Felix wanted with him in his room, but he’s not sure if asking would earn him a knee to the crotch or not.

And so he waits.

“I can hear you thinking,” Felix snips after a minute.

“Me? You must be thinking of someone else,” Sylvain murmurs. “No thoughts here.”

“Liar.”

“You’re losing your insulting touch.”

“I’m not—” Felix cuts himself off with a sharp sigh and rolls his eyes. “You’re not yourself.”

“Well, you told me not to talk about girls, so…” Sylvain mirrors Felix, arms crossed and face guarded as he gazes over. It’s not that he  _ wants  _ to be obtuse, or even should be, but if there’s one thing they’re both on the same page about, it’s not handling their feelings well.

And Sylvain does feel. He grieves for the lost, for all that’s happened and for things yet to come. He aches with the want that fills him from head to toe—want for normalcy, for _better,_ for Felix, for anything to cling to so he knows he’s not going to go down the same bloody path as Miklan.

“Sylvain,” Felix says. He says it with all the gentleness he can muster, and it breaks Sylvain’s heart to hear the softness he uses with stray cats. “I just...remember how we’d sleep together as kids?”

Sylvain nods.

“I didn’t have as many nightmares on those nights.”

_ Fuck.  _ Sylvain takes a deep breath and lets it out in a slow, measured exhale before Felix does the unthinkable and leans against him. Their shoulders press together, elbows, knees, and then Felix’s head is on his shoulder, and Sylvain is  _ gone.  _ He swallows hard before asking, “So you have nightmares?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Right.”

Felix’s hair tickles Sylvain’s chest as he nods, though they’re already in agreement. “I tried wearing myself out earlier, but it wasn’t enough. Slept, but slept like shit and woke up thinking about things I’d rather fucking forget.”

“And you want to share a bed,” Sylvain says. He’s very careful about keeping his hands to himself—Felix on a good day doesn’t like to be touched, and this is not a good day. “With me.”

“Who else am I going to fucking share one with, Dimitri?” Felix snaps. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” Sylvain backpedals. “Right, I guess, I mean, I don’t mind, but it’s just...unexpected.”

“You’re sure?” Felix looks up with narrowed eyes, as though waiting for Sylvain to laugh and say  _ Ha, still a child,  _ and that makes Sylvain’s chest twist too. 

“Of course, Fe.”

“Good.” Leaning into Sylvain harder, Felix closes his eyes. “There’s a knot in my shoulder. Fix it for me.”

“Quite demanding for someone who’s about to make himself at home in my bed,” Sylvain says.

Felix’s face heats, but he doesn’t open his eyes. “You’re going to be all over me anyway,” he mutters. “You always used me like some stuffed animal, arms around me and messing up my hair.”

“I don’t remember any toys that drooled on my pillow,” Sylvain teases. He throws an arm back to rest his elbow on the side of the bath, trails his fingertips gently over the lean lines of Felix’s bowed shoulders as Felix growls. “Where does it hurt?”

“Right shoulder, midway down my shoulderblade,” Felix says. Then, “But if you don’t want to…”

Sylvain hums, shakes his head. “I don’t mind.”

“Fine.”

Sylvain continues to idly draw shapes onto Felix’s skin, allowing the touch to warm him up before he smooths his hand down Felix’s spine, searching for the affected area. “Here?” he asks, rubbing gently.

Felix’s only answer is a low groan and barely-there nod.

“Fe?”

“What?” Felix says sourly.

“You sounded like you were almost asleep.”

“It’s fucking late and I’m still awake,” Felix says. “Of course I’m tired.”

Now, Sylvain’s not an idiot—he knows Felix, but he also knows opportunity, and this is both wrapped into one. He presses against the knot again with his thumb, earning himself another moan, and then stops. “Be easier if you were horizontal,” he says, and the seconds between his words and Felix’s nearly makes his heart stop.

“Yeah,” Felix says after an eternity. “I guess it would.” He pulls away, Sylvain immediately mourning the loss, and shoves a hand through his tangled hair before hefting himself out of the water and wrapping a towel around his waist. “Hurry up.”

“That desperate for me?” Sylvain asks, struggling to keep a straight face at the way a flush spreads all the way down Felix’s chest before Felix is laying into him again, continuing to pick as they dress and retreat to Sylvain’s room. It’s about everything and nothing, and not all of it Sylvain-related. Felix hasn’t been good at vulnerability for a long time. His armor’s thicker now than ever, even if Sylvain’s allowed to see glimpses of a much softer core on occasion.

He doesn’t even wait for Sylvain to shut the door before he flops down on the bed. “There,” he mumbles into the blankets. “Horizontal.”

Torchlight flickers over his body, lighting it in gentle oranges and golds that melt easily into shadow as Sylvain sits beside him. He hasn’t even laid down all the way—his legs still hang half off, and when Sylvain points this out, he shuffles forward with a put-upon scoff. “It’s easier if you’re all the way relaxed,” Sylvain points out. “You said to fix it, so.”

“Shut up,” Felix says, because he knows Sylvain’s right. 

“Sure.” 

“Sure,” Felix echoes, soft and barely-there as Sylvain’s hand falls to rest between his shoulders. “Or, you can...fuck, I don’t know. Just do whatever.”

“So you want me to talk?”

Felix’s next words are small and somehow enormous, the whole world’s weight behind them as they beat down what few walls Sylvain’s got left around his heart. “I want you to—to be there, I guess. I’ve missed you.”

“Oh,” Sylvain says quietly, and then picks up the ends of Felix’s hair. “Want me to do this, too?”

“If you want.”

Sylvain does, and has for a long fucking time now. He tugs part of the blanket over Felix’s legs so he doesn’t get cold as he retrieves his brush. “Sit up for me,” he says when he returns. 

Felix obeys wordlessly, slumping forward in the low light with a look Sylvain doesn’t quite recognize on his face. “Sylvain?” he asks after a bit, as Sylvain’s combing his fingers through ink-black strands.

“Hm?”

“Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to fight.”

Nothing Sylvain can say will change that fact, or make it better, so he simply leans in to rest his head against the back of Felix’s shoulder in a small gesture of solidarity before continuing to untangle his hair. He doesn’t miss Felix’s shiver, nor the hitch in his breath, but he sets those things aside for a time when they’re more than raw nerves occupying the same space. 

In these midnight hours, alone, they don’t have to pretend that the world is all right. Felix doesn’t hide the way his hands shake in his lap when he looks at them, and Sylvain doesn’t paste on the smile everyone’s become so accustomed to. He works the brush through damp tresses until they’re both lulled into a sense of security, and then he pauses.

“You didn’t have to stop,” Felix says.

“What would you do if we didn’t have to?” Sylvain asks. “Fight. If this was just…” He inhales deeply. “If it were different.”

Felix twists around, a frown on his lips as his eyes search Sylvain’s face for Goddess-knows-what. “What would  _ you  _ do?”

Right. Because that’s the way of it—Sylvain asks, and Felix answers with deflection.

“Travel, maybe,” Sylvain says.

“Have half the girls on the continent, more like.”

Sylvain tugs harder than strictly necessary on his hair as he begins to weave it into a plait.

_ “Ow,”  _ Felix hisses, shoving weakly at Sylvain’s hands. “What the fuck was that?”

“I’d ask  _ you  _ to come with,” Sylvain says. 

“Oh.” 

Sylvain draws one section over another, then again, and again, and then—

“I wouldn’t take too much convincing,” Felix says, equally as quiet as he tips his head forward for a better angle. “I’d go.”

Humming softly in acknowledgement, Sylvain lets the braid fall against Felix’s spine before pushing him back down to the bed. “Take your shirt off for me.”

Felix arches a brow as he looks back.

“It’s easier if you don’t have fabric bunching up,” Sylvain insists. “Seriously! Not  _ everything  _ is me thinking with my dick. Besides, you—we would’ve—” He stops himself before he can continue, because  _ that’s  _ not a conversation he knows he’s ready to have tonight. 

_ You would’ve been just as beautiful in my bed five years ago. _

_ I would’ve been whatever you needed. _

_ We would’ve been kings in our own right,  _ he aches to say, but five years have changed them both, and Felix looks so sweet holding Sylvain’s pillow that Sylvain doesn’t want to disturb him any more.

“Please,” he ends lamely, and Felix obliges with surprisingly little bitching. There’s another irritated remark about the cold, and a sharp inhale when Sylvain’s hand brushes over the back of his neck, but then he’s burying his head in the pillow again and allowing Sylvain to touch him in ways he’s been craving since he learned what it was to love someone else. 

Felix’s skin holds a lot of scars, evidence of injuries Sylvain hasn’t been there to witness. He stores the location of each carefully inside of himself, a map of all he couldn’t save Felix from. He’ll remember them all later on another night like tonight, steeped in regret and sorrow and probably far away from Felix.

They can’t be inseparable forever, after all.

Part of him wants to ask about each one, to listen to Felix and hear all the stories he hides under anger and a haughty look. He’d love to hear what caused the spindly silver line stretching from just below his shoulder down to his stomach, the puckered skin of what’s probably a stab wound high on his other shoulder. Sylvain wants to know them all.

He’d press his lips to every one right now, if he wasn’t reasonably certain he’d be relegated to the floor while Felix starfishes comfortably in his bed, alone.

“Sylvain,” Felix slurs.

“Yeah.”

“You’re  _ really  _ good,” he mumbles, drawing out each word until he trails off in a yawn. “‘M gonna take you with me just for that purpose.”

“Not because you enjoy me? Ouch,” Sylvain says. 

“Shut up.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

Felix freezes. 

Sylvain curses.

The shadows flickering over them morph into monsters, swallowing the word, but not quick enough.

“Fe, I’m s—”

“Say you’re sorry and I’m leaving,” Felix interrupts. “Because I know what your lies sound like, and you’re not sorry for that.” He burrows deeper into the pillow. “Keep going.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sylvain says softly. He swallows back the questions dancing on his tongue, forces them back inside where they belong as he works Felix’s muscles. He’s gone limp and boneless—Sylvain’s always been good with his hands, and it seems even Felix isn’t immune to their power.

When he stops, Felix’s breathing is deep and even, braid mussed where he’s rubbed it against the pillow. 

“Better?” Sylvain whispers, unsure if Felix has actually surrendered to sleep or he’s just brushing off the awkwardness by faking it.

“Better.” Felix peeks out from the corner of his eye, gazing until Sylvain has to look away. “Put out the lights and come to bed, Sylvain,” he says, and  _ goddess  _ if that isn’t all Sylvain’s wanted to hear from him. Then, Felix says  _ please,  _ and Sylvain’s leaning down to press his lips to the crown of Felix’s head before he can stop himself. He rests in this moment between bliss and certain doom for an eternity, just breathing Felix in before Felix inevitably comes to his senses and shoves him out of the warmth.

But Felix doesn’t, and Sylvain’s entirely too exhausted to unpack it as he tears himself away to snuff out the lights. When he returns to the bed, Felix is still lying in the same place Sylvain left him. “You going to get under the blankets, Fe?”

Felix shakes his head but gets up in the next second, rubbing one hand over his eyes as the other fumbles for the ties on his pants. “You too,” he says when Sylvain makes to protest. “And don’t you  _ dare  _ tell me you don’t want do.”

“Felix—”

“Goddess fucking help me, are you always this difficult? Don’t answer that.” Felix skirts around the bed to stand in front of Sylvain in his smalls, arms crossed and steadfastly avoiding Sylvain’s eyes. “I want to sleep with you. I don’t—” He huffs. “Not…”

“What?”

“I like it when you touch me,” Felix growls out, and Sylvain’s heart sinks at the thought that maybe that’s  _ all  _ Felix is looking for tonight. 

Even so, he’d give it to him in a heartbeat.

“So you want me to—” Sylvain makes a pointed gesture between them, hesitant as it is.

“What?  _ No,”  _ Felix says. 

“Then what are you doing?” Sylvain asks.

“You know what, this is—no, I’m not doing this,” Felix says. He turns away, but Sylvain is faster, and holds him by the forearms.

“What is  _ this?”  _ he asks.

“I wanted to be close because I  _ fucking  _ miss my best friend, and then you kissed me, and I want—I want—” Felix grunts in frustration before shoving Sylvain’s arms away and wrapping his own around his stomach. “It’s too late for this.”

“I want you,” Sylvain says.  _ “You.” _

“Then what the fuck have we been dancing around each other for?” Felix’s eyes are dark and full of some unreadable thing as they snap up, and he stands stock still as Sylvain takes a step forward. “Why haven’t I been enough?”

“Oh, Felix,” Sylvain says softly. He closes the rest of the gap and wraps his arms around Felix’s bare shoulders, rests his cheek on Felix’s head and just  _ holds  _ him until Felix’s frozen form begins to melt. “Felix, sweetheart, darling—”

“No.”

“You have  _ always  _ been enough for me,” Sylvain continues, arms tightening as Felix presses his face into Sylvain’s shoulder. “Always.”

Felix nods and lets out a trembling breath. “Whatever.”

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain says, and Felix doesn’t correct him, because this time he  _ does _ mean it. “I’m so sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t.”

A shrug. Then, softly, “I wasn’t going to fucking beg for attention.”

“You should never have to.” 

“I’m tired. Come to bed,” Felix mumbles. “I don’t want to talk about this tonight.”

“Later, then?” It’s much less specific than Sylvain would’ve liked, but it’s vague enough for Felix, who nods curtly. Later, right now, might as well mean never, and Sylvain can only hope that maybe it means  _ in the morning  _ as Felix crawls across the mattress and curls into the fetal position. He strips down to his smalls as well and climbs in beside Felix, even dares to rest an arm over Felix’s side.

Felix, who leans back into the touch with a near-silent whine.

“Fe?”

The muscles in Felix’s throat work as he attempts to find the words to say, but what ends up happening instead about rends Sylvain’s heart in two. Felix laces his fingers with Sylvain’s and pulls Sylvain’s palm to rest below his cheek, pressing impossibly gentle kisses to its rough curves and upwards until he’s moving to kiss every battle-calloused fingertip. When he’s finished and resting his knitted brow against their folded knuckles, he whispers, “Don’t ever go where I can’t follow.”

Sylvain can’t promise that, but he reminds him of the next best thing. “We live and die together, right?” he breathes against Felix’s nape. 

“Right.” Felix’s lashes brush over Sylvain’s skin as his eyes shut, still holding Sylvain’s hand captive as his breathing begins to even again. There’s a few more exhausted half-kisses and needy pleas for reassurance, and Sylvain can’t help but wonder exactly what happened in his dreams that Felix is so desperate tonight. Because he is—he’s never this open, this bare, and it’s a little scary, if Sylvain’s honest with himself. 

Terrifying, but in the precious way only Felix can be.

Sylvain only hopes he’s able to witness it as many times as Felix will let him. 

**Author's Note:**

> (Felix woke up from a nightmare that Sylvain had died in his arms and needed reassurance)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments make my world go round, and I always do my best to get back to them ❤️
> 
> You can also find me lurking and yelling about fictional characters on:  
> [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/aryagraceling)  
> [Discord](https://discord.gg/cM8FaND)  
> [Tumblr](https://aryagraceling.tumblr.com)  
> [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951)


End file.
